Final Updates to the Script/Story
Over the passed week Lin has continued to develop and finalise the script/storylines that we wanted to include for the overall narrative. After sending her my draft updates for the script she took some of the recommendations that I had made and also added some more additional dialogue, removed some and amended some scenes to make a more cohesive narrative. She also felt that it would be better to include some more dialogue and story beats within the city scene because initially there was only a couple lines but now she has included a short food/dinner sequence which we can add to the overall experience if we have time towards the end of the project.
Developing the Environment in Unity (Beach & Pier)
Myself and Yiran have spent more time over the passed week working on the Unity environments which included now adding in the models that Esme & Marianna had created to see what they will look like in virtual reality. I have now added in the XR interaction tool into the Unity scene to see how they will work and overall i felt that the results worked very well and looked great for the scene, the models they created really suited the environment as well as the feel for the whole experience.
I have also added in some more assets into the scene such as Benches and Bins to add some more detail to the pier. I also want to continue to develop the backgrounds and add in moving water from the Unity standard assets over the next week to complete the environment so its ready to add in interactions etc.
Problems with Unity Collab
Myself and Yiran are both working on this project in Unity with my focus being on the Pier scene and hers being the city environment and it was suggested to us that we could use Unity Collab to work on the same project build. However we had a number of problems where we had to test this feature multiple times over multiple builds to get it working.
We needed to change passwords, permissions and many other aspects to get this working but luckily we were able to upload and download eachothers versions of the projects with great success which means that we are now prepaired to combine the scenes and work together on this one single file. We will also continue to have backups on our own machines incase anything goes wrong with the cloud versions or uploading overlaps with one another.
Sound List
For this project we will soon be joined by BA sound art students who will help us to create the music and sound assets for our projects. We then all got together to write down the list of different sounds, music and assets we would need for our virtual reality project.
Identify the soundtrack:
- Funny music like spongebob squarepants
- Mini Game background music
- Romantic music while flying to another scene
Informational:
- Dialogue between two seagulls
- Bubble popup “Duang”
- Seagull sounds (as first person player at the beginning
- Teleport Sound (wings flapping)
- Eating Ice Cream Sound effect
- Tripping Sound Effect
- Mini game sound effect (Ticking clock and winner)
Environmental Sounds:
- Sea Waves
- City Background Noise
- Baby Crying
- People walking around saying “Sorry”
Group Meeting (Wed 9th Feb)
On wednesday this week we all got together for our weekly group meeting to discuss the current developments with the project. We had discussed the presentation that we had created for the Mid term crit while also showing the final script and unity developments to the rest of the group to get some feedback and opinions from everyone. The 3D animation students also discussed that they have now made a ice cream cart asset to go with the eating mini game as well as now finising the rigging for the characters which looked fantastic which means they are now read for animation and sounds in the final experience.
Mid Term Crit Presentation (Wed 9th Feb)
After we had our group meeting, myself , Yiran and Lin went to the classroom to have our Mid crit presentation of the current progress so far with the project. We put together a presentation containing all of the work we have so far from the script and development of the environment as well as Esme & Marianna’s work on the character models and animations they had created.
The feedback we recieved was positive but it was suggested that we needed to give much more detail on the overall gameplay and interactivity for the whole experience because we may not have shown it clearly in the presentation which we agreed with. It was also suggested that we may need to dial back a bit on some of our ideas such as the ice cream eating mini game which was suggested might be slightly too difficult to do in the time frame that we currently have left for the rest of the project.
Voice Recordings (Initial Drafts)
After having our meeting with the group this week and finding out that the rigging of the 3D models that Marianna and Esme had created is coming along very well and will soon be ready for animation, we needed to look into the next steps. While we will soon be developing both the hand drawn storyboards but also the VR storyboards, we will need some voice recordings to give an idea of the timing and animations that they will need to create.
So I felt that it would be helpful if myself and with the help of my friend Alex (again greatly appreciated), we could record the lines from the final script to give a general idea of how long the animations will be even if we use these as the final recordings for the project. So we spent the morning together recording the lines in different variations and speeds to have voice examples that are ready for animations but could also be used in the final product if needed (Please excuse my Blue Yeti Mic set up, best i can do…).